THE RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE THROUGH THE LENS OF MELANIE SMITH, IN VALENCIA

Only One Thing Was Strange, to Keep Thinking Like Before brings together at IVAM in Valencia the two most recent projects by British-Mexican artist Melanie Smith (Poole, United Kingdom, 1965), Axolotl and Tixinda. Both works take as their starting point two endangered species that are closely intertwined with the culture and ecosystems of Mexico, where Smith is based and has developed much of her artistic practice. The exhibition questions the separation between culture and nature and proposes an approach to other species that attends to their bodies, morphology, and behavioral patterns.

Axolotl focuses on the Mexican axolotl, whose image has become ubiquitous in popular culture, while the species itself faces a critical situation in its natural habitat. This contradiction provides the starting point for the project, in which Smith explores the axolotl’s corporeality and plasticity while reflecting on the ways in which other species are represented. The work asks what happens when the representation of an animal becomes increasingly omnipresent while its physical presence in the natural world is progressively threatened.

Tixinda, meanwhile, turns to the purple sea snail, a species closely associated with an Indigenous textile tradition in Oaxaca. In the Mixtec community of Pinotepa de San Luis, its secretion is obtained directly from the living snail to dye cotton fibers, after which the animal is returned to precisely the place where it was found. In this way, the use of the species is inseparable from its care and continuity. This relationship provides Smith with a framework for reflecting on the fragility of both a traditional practice and an endangered ecosystem, as well as on the forms of coexistence that emerge between human communities and other species.

Melanie Smith. Only One Thing Was Strange, to Keep Thinking Like Before is on view until 10 January 2027 at IVAM Centre Julio González, Guillem de Castro, 118, Valencia, Spain.